Products and appliances, e.g., toasters, refrigerators, ovens, washing machines, dryers, thermostats, security systems, baby monitors, telephone answering machines, electric car chargers, sprinkler systems, light bulbs, etc., having wireless, e.g., Wi-Fi (WI-FI is a registered trademark of WI-FI Alliance Corporation California, 10900-B Stonelake Boulevard, Suite 126, Austin, TEXAS 78759), embedded devices are becoming more and more prevalent and are being used to advantage by consumers. Wi-Fi is an acronym for a technology that allows an electronic device to transmit and receive data or connect to the Internet wirelessly using radio waves. The Wi-Fi Alliance defines Wi-Fi as any “wireless local area network (WLAN) products that are based on the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers' (IEEE) 802.11 standards.” However, procedures for connecting a Wi-Fi embedded device to a WLAN may be difficult for a user or not intuitive.
Referring to FIG. 1, depicted are schematic communications diagrams of a prior technology method for easy configuration of a Wi-Fi embedded device so that it may become a client of a specific wireless local area network (WLAN). Shown in FIG. 1(a), a wireless router 104 of a wireless local area network (WLAN) has a radio frequency (RF) antenna 110b and is adapted to wirelessly communicate using a radio channel 112 to an existing client user device 108 having a RF antenna 110c. An embedded device 106 having a RF antenna 110a is not able to communicate with the wireless router 104 because it does not yet have the WLAN service set identifier (SSID) necessary to join the basic service set (BSS) of the WLAN and become a wireless client thereof. The BSS is a component of the IEEE 802.11 WLAN architecture, described in the IEEE 802.11 standards which are incorporated by reference herein for all purposes. All wireless clients of the wireless router 104 must have the same SSID as the one programmed into the wireless router 104 to enable communications therebetween. For this example, the user device 108 may be a smart phone having Wi-Fi capabilities.
Shown in FIG. 1(b), the user device 108 must disconnect from the wireless router 104 in order to connect to the embedded device 106. Loading of the SSID to the embedded device 106 may commence once the user device 108 connects thereto. This wireless connection therebetween may either be by ad hoc networking or a software enabled access point (SoftAP) using the user device 108. SoftAP configures a smart phone (user device 108) into a client radio and wirelessly communicate using a radio channel 114 as an Access Point to serve other wireless devices that do not have a data connection otherwise. Thus the embedded device 106 when in the vicinity of the SoftAP enabled device (user device 108) may be programmed with the SSID of the wireless router 104 by the user device 108, either manually or automatically through an application program (App).
Shown in FIG. 1(c), once the embedded device 106 has been programmed with the SSID of the wireless router 104, the embedded device 106 can become a client of the wireless router 104 and wirelessly communicate using a radio channel 116 to the wireless router 104. The user device 108 may also reestablish its wireless communication using the radio channel 112 back to the wireless router 104. The aforementioned steps may be cumbersome to those not familiar with network setups and must also disconnect the user device 108 from the wireless router 104 and Internet access during SSID programming of the embedded device 106.